During winter storms, frozen precipitation can accumulate on cable-stayed bridges as wet snow, atmospheric icing, or freezing rain. During or after a storm the frozen accretion can shed off of the stay and ice can fall into traffic, damaging cars and injuring pedestrians. Several cable-stayed bridges have experienced significant icing problems resulting in injury, damage, and temporary bridge closure. Existing solutions are limited to bridge closure, manual de-icing from a boom lift, and mechanical methods based on sliding a chain down the length of the stay. While the chain method allows the bridge to remain partially open, the sliding chains can wear out the cable stays, reducing their useful life. In addition, the chain method requires a large number of onsite workers to be present during each storm to hoist the chains back to the top of each cable stay. The process of operating the chain system is costly and exposes workers and drivers to additional risk. Several anti-icing coatings have been tested but none have been shown to be effective. Testing has been done on several thermal systems designed to either melt or shed snow and ice buildup. Each system has shown that thermal systems have the potential to effectively prevent dangerous accumulations, however, previous methods have all been deemed too energy intensive to be practical on a large scale.